Certainly, a significant tax on petroleum (say 25%), with the revenue going towards public transit, pathway systems, renewable energy installation, R&D, etc. would help two issues.
making non-renewable fuels expensive and less desireable
encouraging renewable fuels and less-polluting transport options.
Of course, you’d need a populace that demands such change in order to push such a significant and visible tax change. It won’t happen until a tragic event, directly related to climate change occurs, like New Orleans sinking (and I don’t wanna swim)
This is not true. http://www.caltax.org/research/gastax.htm
In California Gas gets a $0.18 tax which is about 12% vs the about 8% sales tax. In addidtion there is other state taxes of 8.8 cents. Plus there is the Federal excise tax of 18.4 cents. Giving us a whopping 45.2 cents in gasoline tax.
If there was a significant tax on fuel, wouldn’t that cause a recession? Everything you use/buy which has been trucked from somewhere will increase in price.
And the public’s objections would also be substantial: look how much people are already moaning about how fuel prices are increasing, even when gas in North America costs substantially less than it does elsewhere in the world. What would drive a government to risk upsetting so many voters so much?
And re: phreesh’s comment about a catastrophe related to climate change: what would it take? Things continue to happen which ‘could’ be related to CC (unseasonable weather, melting/cracking ice caps, floods, droughts etc) and are pretty catastrophic for the people who live there, but it can always be argued that they are not related to CC. I think it really would take a large # of Americans dying in a massive freakish weather occurrence (or, of course, New Orleans sinking).
A recession? I doubt it. Gas is very well taxed in Canada (50% of the cost is tax here).
Money is the biggest issue. Gas tax, road tax, tag charges, license renewals etc are all ways the government makes money to pay for medicare (in canada) and various other things (including a good portion to TTC public transit). If we got “rid” of cars (and went to public transit for instance) there wouldn’t be enough money to pay for it unless they taxed users even more. We need to keep the cars, just change the power source.
Still, coming back to the cultural issue. Global warming isn’t going to do it. We need a more immediate threat to get enough people pushing for better power sources. Oil is bound to run out in my life time (figuring another 50-70 years knock on wood) so I’m sure we’ll see the shift…just can’t see anything less than that forcing us to change.
Once gas doubles or triples in price…then we’ll start seeing some panic.
Well, if fuel cost more, then more transporting of goods would be done by fuel efficient means, i.e. trains rather than trucks.
Anyways, if this is a legitimate concern, fuel used for transportation of goods could be exempted from the heightened tax. Trucking companies already are concerned with fuel efficiency, obviously, to a far, far greater extent than are commuters.
That instance does not apply to the bulk of nuclear power production in the world. Try going to the EIA website and find the equivalent availability factor or equivalent forced outage rates of nuclear plants. Then find the actual net capacity factors, and compare these with fossil. Then find the cost in $/net kWh.
As to the article linked - nearly every power plant built is over budget, behind schedule, and finds some technical hurdle during construction that was unforseen. That’s how real life works when you’re building something that complicated. You would not believe some of the atrocities I’ve seen happen when new coal plants or CTs are built. I’ve personally seen $1.2M disappear without a trace in one month due to a “misunderstanding” with a contractor on a CT project in Columbia.
Generally, you have to just accept it as part of the risk in building a $100M - $2B plant. And believe me, you do not want people to “meet the budget”, so to speak, on a nuclear plant, if unforseen circumstances or problems arise.
I’m not addressing your arguments of concern over waste disposal and safety, as they are legitimate points (although the safety record of nuclear, as explored in a very landmark thread long ago in GQ, fares very well compared to coal). I just want to say that the article you’ve linked is misleading if it was intended to reflect on the entire industry, and you may not want to base your objections on it.